


The Road To Recovery

by MagpieMorality



Series: Writepie Prompt Fills [124]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, M/M, Recovery, Unspecified characters, You can read this as any of the ships listed above!, unspecified ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24352495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieMorality/pseuds/MagpieMorality
Summary: For the prompt: "if this makes you uncomfy please feel free to ignore. But id love some hurt/comfort any ship (my favorites are Analogical, Intrulogical and Rociet but feel free to do others if you want) of one side helping the other through ed recovery (eating disorder)"The characters in this are not named, so can be read as any of the ships listed above. It should be easy to do so, I have tried not to overly characterise any one side either way!
Series: Writepie Prompt Fills [124]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638634
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	The Road To Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains introspection from the perspective of a character with an eating disorder. There are mentions of specific eating disorders (Anorexia and Bulimia) and the character struggles with accepting what's happening and examines some of his thoughts about what he's doing. It does have a happy ending but please be safe while reading this!

Recovery is slow. It’s hard and it’s annoying and more than anything it’s _painful_. Half of the problem with it all is that he hasn’t entirely come to terms with the fact that he had anything to recover from? Maybe being a workaholic, but his forgetting to eat a lot of the time never felt like a _disorder_. He wasn’t anorexic, or bulimic, he wasn’t using food as a coping mechanism or reward and punishment system or anything conscious. Well, maybe that last one isn’t entirely true, because if he hadn’t been productive enough perhaps sometimes he skipped meals to get more work done but that wasn’t that weird! He just wasn’t crazy about food, and he prioritised his work instead. 

“That’s entirely the point,” his poor, frantic boyfriend will say. Part of the pain is the feedback from how much he’s hurting the people around him. Which he can’t help, and the grating awful pain just amplifies and amplifies. “Food is a basic human need. It has to come before getting work done.”

He agrees, in principle. In reality it’s sometime just hard to make happen. 

Anyway, recovery is slow. And eating so much and so often is definitely making him ill. It’s obviously that, not the way he gets so stressed about taking time to eat that he feels nauseous, and then spends so much energy thinking about the nausea until it grows and grows, fed by his brain until the psychosomatic response feels physical and he has to lie down and wait for gentle, cool hands to hold him and soothe him and distract him until his brain stops tugging on the feeling and lets it go, back into nothingness where it belongs. Like it was never real. 

Logically he knows it wasn’t. But he’s in this mess because of illogical thinking, isn’t he. 

“It’s not something you chose to have,” comes the soft reassurance, but he’s not sure. He thinks he did choose, somewhere, somewhen, but when he casts his mind back, when his therapist coaxes his thoughts towards the why of it all, there’s nothing to find. Maybe he forgot, or maybe there was never a reason. Maybe there was a reason that he doesn’t want to remember, or maybe he is too scared to know because then he’d have to admit it all, allow it all to be real. 

It’s not something he wants to be real. 

“I don’t want to be the guy that had an eating disorder,” he croaks in the darkness one night. There’s the sound of movement as a body presses against his own, the slight tickle of breath against his shoulder. 

“You’re not. And you won’t be. Just like I’m not the guy who had a stutter until fourth grade, or the guy who didn’t get into college. They’re things that happened and they’re things that are in the past and they’re memories, sure, but they’re not who I am. Sure maybe somebody remembers me that way, but you don’t, our friends don’t, and that’s what matters to me.” A kiss finds its way to his skin. “And admitting it won’t change what happened, it just gives it a name. If anything it’s easier to compartmentalise, explain, understand, whatever. It stops people from wondering about it so much, I guess? I think?”

“Maybe,” he says, unsure about that. Okay so there’s a point there; even if he never admits he had- has?- a problem then everyone will still have seen the... symptoms, so to speak. It’s not like they were subtle. Maybe naming and shaming the whole goddamn thing will be like closure?

He likes the sound of closure. It means moving on, getting better, changing upwards. 

“Hey,” he whispers, hearing the sleepy hum of acknowledgement and feeling his heart tingle with affection, full to bursting. “I have an eating disorder. I want to stop having one.”

He waits in the silence that follows, until suddenly he’s enveloped in a tight hug and he can feel how much the arms holding him are shaking. Or maybe it’s him that’s shaking. 

Either way, it feels quietly good, like a tiny victory. One small step in the grand scheme of things; one giant step on the road to recovery.

One day, a few years from now, they’ll be having dinner together and at the end of finishing every last delicious scrap, taking his time to enjoy the food, he’ll get on one knee and pull out a ring. It will mean all the more for the full bellies they share, and the slow, steady, calm beating of his heart. The way he’s thinking about the food, and he’ll always be thinking about it in a way only other people who have gone through the same thing do. But the way that it’s not a stress, not a problem, nothing but victory after victory, and a joy to feel the satisfaction of taking care of himself. He’ll be the one to make dessert, even, when the shouts of joy and fierce, tear-wet kisses are done, and when he offers the final spoonful of their shared sweet treat it will be because he feels genuinely full, of both food and fondness, and not for any other reason. 


End file.
